Vaguely Literary: Nick Young x The Little Prince

Read up, Swaggy.

Nick Young, I recommend you read The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. It may look like a simple children’s picture book, but the message is deeper than that, and it’s something you might relate to. It’s a story about our inner child and how that child is beaten out of us as we grow up. Nick, some people will tell you to just “grow up” and put all of your Swaggy P nonsense aside so you can be a serious professional and have a long-term contract with job security. But we know that’s not you. You love your inner child.

The narrator of the story is a pilot who has crash landed in the desert. He has a very serious job, that pilot, but when he was a kid he was a creative artist whose drawing of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant was lost on most adults. The story jumps ahead to the desert, where the pilot meets a strange character, the Little Prince. Now, I’m not going to summarize the whole book here or tell you the full meaning because it’s up to each reader to decide. It’s a beautiful story about enlightenment, love, secrecy, death, you name it. Everyone who reads it remembers the story of the rose, the asteroid and the snake.

Basically, The Little Prince is the perfect book for someone who resents the fact that we are forced to grow up. All of these adults have a need to put people into categories, whether you are a businessman or a lamppost operator or a king. They say you have to be a slashing shooting guard or a rebounding forward, you have to know your role on your team and you can’t do what makes you happy, like celebrating threes before they go in. You can’t go toe to toe with LeBron James on Christmas Day because you haven’t paid those dues, you are not that level superstar. People will tear you down and crush your spirit. Don’t listen to them.

Swaggy P, you are not one who needs to be told the joys of acting somewhat childish. Still, armed with this literary classic, you have what you need to show them all that you get the world in ways they’ve forgotten about. Your backstory is well-documented, how you faced tragedy when you were a boy and bounced around different schools. With The Little Prince in your arsenal, you don’t have to revisit those stories, you can tell the media and fans “I read this classic piece of literature…” and Nick Young will have the last laugh.